With 97 percent of Georgia's precincts reporting, Bernes had 126,005 votes to 107,393 for Mead.

Heavy early voting in Bernes' home county of Cobb offered a strong indication that she would win a seat on the appeals court.

Cobb County registered about 2,400 votes in last week's advance voting while Fulton County, Mead's home county, had less than half that number voting. Turnout is critical in a runoff for a so-called down-ballot race, which gets little media coverage or voter attention.

Turnout across the state Tuesday was generally very sparse, according to Cara Hodgson, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, which oversees elections.

"I don't guess this weather is helping," she said.

In Clarke County, which included a runoff for a school board seat in west Athens, turnout was only 7 percent - 3,308 of the 47,545 eligible voters went to the polls Tuesday.

Damp, foggy conditions tended to make voting seem pretty inconvenient to people who may know little about the candidates or the office up for grabs, said Daniel P. Franklin, political science professor at Georgia State University.

The appeals court election was to fill the vacancy on the state's second-highest court that is being created by the retirement of Judge Frank M. Eldridge. Originally, the election was held during the July primaries even though it's a non-partisan post.

Bernes came out ahead then, and Mead came in third place and out of the runoff. But he filed suit because his named was printed incorrectly on about 500 absentee ballots in Laurens County, prompting the Georgia Supreme Court to order a new election Nov. 2. Bernes topped the voting then, too, but not with the 45 percent required to avoid a runoff with Mead Tuesday.

Though the race was non-partisan, Bernes was considered the Republican candidate because she had worked for the GOP's first district attorney in Cobb, and she had hired a political consultant with a long list of Republican clients.

Mead, however, had worked on the staff of Democratic Govs. Zell Miller and Roy Barnes, possibly a liability in a year when Republicans are gaining popularity.

"It's very difficult for Mead to run as a Democrat in this state," Franklin said. "On the one hand, he would probably like to stress his experience, but he can't do it by focusing on working for a governor who lost as a Democrat."

Both candidates lent their campaigns the bulk of their operating funds, about $270,000 by Bernes and $3 million by Mead. She used the money on radio ads, and he bought television spots.

One of the original six candidates in the race, Ashley Hawkins, grumbled Tuesday that so much money and full-time campaigning was required to win a judicial election.

"As I've said from the time I pulled out, it's the best justice money can buy," he said. "It's just sort of sickening the kind of money it takes, and that's not knocking either candidate."

Franklin said even Democratic attorneys were solidly behind Bernes.

"I've never seen so much support for a candidate in the legal community," he said.

By Walter C. Jones

Morris News Service

Jeff Blake/Staff

Ex-principal promises dedication

A former high-school principal will be taking a different seat in the Clarke County School District - Charles Worthy won a runoff election for the Board of Education's District 6 seat Tuesday.

Worthy received 424 of 767 votes cast in the school board voting district, or about 55 percent of the vote. Candidate Alta Allen, a former curriculum director for the school district who retired in June, received 343 votes, according to final, unofficial returns.

"I'm gong to be dedicated to this entire school district," Worthy said Tuesday night. "I was a dedicated teacher, a dedicated principal, and I'm going to be a dedicated board member. They can bank on that. I went around and knocked on doors when I was campaigning, and I'm going to continue to go around and talk, not only to members of this voting district but to members of the entire school district."

Worthy, a 28-year veteran of the school district, heavily emphasized his home-court advantage in his campaign. He worked his way up through the ranks from teaching at Cedar Shoals High School, eventually serving as principal at the school before retiring last year.

Both candidates emphasized increased support for teachers as a way to boost achievement and to stem teacher turnover in Clarke County, where about one in five teachers leaves every year. Both also advocated increasing parent involvement in schools.

Additionally, both candidates had emphasized better career and technical training as a way of boosting the school district's graduation rate, which has been the object of concern among educators, businesses and community members - the rate, which dropped slightly last year, hovers around 50 percent.

During the campaign, Worthy said he wanted to strengthen career education on all levels, including career awareness programs in elementary school and career exploration in middle school. Career and technical classes also should be more closely wed to academic classes in high school, he said.

He credited his win to a campaign run on four "P"s - prayer, preparation, performance and praise. His praise Tuesday night included God, his campaign workers and especially his wife, Ruby, who he credited with working 18-hour days on the campaign.

Worthy will take over a seat that represents a sprawling district in west Athens, home to Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School and two elementary schools. The seat was formerly held by Lyndon Goodly, who endorsed Worthy in the campaign.

The seat became vacant when Goodly left in September to accept a position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but he already had announced he wouldn't be seeking re-election.

School board members agreed at a November meeting to ask the winner of Tuesday's runoff to begin school board duties early and to sit in on December meetings - both Worthy and Allen had agreed to do so, board president Jackie Saindon said.

Worthy will be joined in January by another freshman school board member, Allison Lucas Wright, a medical illustrator and adjunct instructor in UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art, who was unchallenged in her bid for the District 4 seat after long-time board member Svea Bogue announced she wouldn't seek re-election this year.

Two other seats also were up for election this year, but board members Vernon Payne, District 2, and Sidney Anne Waters, District 8, were unchallenged.